33+1 Haiku for the city
S -VHS, duration 9’05’’, 2000
Exhibition of the first unit of the permanent collection of M.M.C.A., THESSALONIKI 2003
"Megacities": "From the real to the virtual city",THESSALONIKI 2000
Courtesy of the MMCA, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
The video is a continuum of fire and water ; fire rising
and water descending but neither fire evaporates water
nor water extinguishes fire.The third element participating
in the synthesis is an animated column consisted of
broken and unbroken lines.
The concept of filia ke nikos derives from Empedocles, the
pre-Socratic ancient Greek philosopher.
Filia (attraction,friendship) and nikos (strife,opposition),
the two driving forces of creation. Fire and water -the two
opposite but complementary principles- as elements of
the video are associated primarily with inorganic matter ;
Life has to do with the central animation, yin and yang
counteracting in order to produce the diverse forms of being.
In the work recycling--action (performance) I the following materials are being recycled:
---------------------------
1) A video-montage of 7 films by Werner Herzog (duration 29 minutes, Thessaloniki 2000 )
The films are the following:
Aguirre, the wrath of God
Cobra Verde
Fitzcarraldo
Heart of glass
The enigma of Kaspar Hauser
Where the green ants dream
Woyzeck
with additional music to be heard at the last minutes of the video, the Terminus Part III by Psychic TV
"This is the place where all roads meet..."
--------------------
2) Theoretical text
entitled
"on utopia,
u-topia (no-place)
ideal society
and reality"
(Thessaloniki 1998)
---------------------- 3) Extracts from notes
written in 2004 (Osnabrück 25-4-2004)
"The process of leaving
flooded me with a feeling
that I call nostalgia.
Then the music of my CD-rom came in my mind.
"This is the place where all roads meet
The place where all is secret
The place where time stands still
in the comfort of night
And love becomes will
in the presence of light
I never want to leave
I never want to leave"
Nostalgia
does not occur only after losing something but even before coming close.
So nostalgia is related to the notion of distance
(...)
How can we, humans break the distance?
I will try through art.
But is art a substitute of life
and life a substitute of the place where all roads meet?"
---------------------------
4) Documents from the basement of the building. ---------------------------
5) Whatever else evolves, it is a material in process !
